NCIS team struggles with relationships

If you were looking for answers this week on NCIS, you were out of luck. There were no clues about the Port-to-Port killer until the very last scene when Assistant Medical Examiner Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and Special Agent E.J. Barrett (Sara Jane Morris) discover that the eyeball frozen in an ice cube and left in Special Agent Tony DiNozzo's (Michael Weatherly) drink can actually open security areas with the retinal scan.

It seems like the murder in this episode, female Navy Lt. Lauren Ross being killed at the Pentagon should be an open and shut case. Surveillance cameras catch the murder on tape and it's easy to identify who the killer is, until they find him – Lt. Eric Donner – dead in his car and he was dead two days before the murder occurred.

So what's the connection between the two dead officers? Where they having an affair? Did he know she was pregnant?

They talk with Donner's former commanding officer, Nelson Tunney, who served with Donner on a Navy special warfare unit. Tunney risked his life to save Donner in a fire, although Donner's injuries prevented him serving on the special unit again. He was permanently assigned to top-secret records at the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, Tony realizes he needs to speak to Special Agent Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) about his relationship with E.J. He tries to reason with Gibbs that E.J. is different and that NCIS doesn't have specific rules against coworkers dating. Gibbs response, "My team, my rules. Sleeping with Barrett is a bad idea." I concur, I think she's bad news.

As Tony struggles about whether to continue his relationship, two of Barrett's team members arrive at the NCIS offices. Special Agent Simon Cade (former NFL player Matthew Willig) is already making Special Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) jealous by taking out Forensics Specialist Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette). Willig is huge and his character is an Ivy-leaguer with skills that rival McGee's. Poor Tim, will he be able to win back Abby? At this point, I'm beginning to understand Gibbs' rules that teammates shouldn't date because everyone's distracted about who's dating whom.

The NCIS team tries to uncover how a dead man killed another officer in the Pentagon, and Abby pours over the film of the two, minutes before the murder, trying to read their lips. She finally realizes that Lt. Ross is saying to the murderer, "you're not Eric."

That leads to a highly classified lab where high quality masks are made and Tony and McGee learn that Commander Tunney had a mask made of Donner after Donner died of a heart attack. Tunney then wore the mask so he could alter a report of a special op in Kandahar so he wouldn't be held liable for the death of a tribal leader. He killed Ross to further cover his tracks.

And so we're again left with many unanswered questions. Will Abby keep dating Cade? Will Tony continue to torment himself about Barrett, who says she's not afraid of Gibbs? Does Barrett have something to do with the port-to-port killer? Where's Vance? And are Internet rumors true that this is Ziva's (Cote de Pablo) last season with NCIS?

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